Beauty in Creation and Restoration

There are 4 values that make up the identity of Calgary Missional Church: Gather, Transform, Formation, and Beauty.

Think of the last time you saw a breathtaking sunset, or the last time you were hiking in the mountains.

It’s beautiful isn’t it?

Beauty is something that’s unique. You can’t really contain it. It almost slips through your fingers because the experience in real time can’t be duplicated by any picture or memory.

There’s something unique built in every human, certain longings that make us, well, human. Beauty is one of them, we all crave beauty and the things that it represents. It starts at the very beginning with original beauty–we are all created with original goodness. Reading the first chapters of Genesis gives us this picture–humanity created in the very image of God.

But there’s more.

As image bearers we too are creators with similar capabilities to the Creator. When it comes to beauty that includes two main things: restoration and creation.

We can create beautiful things and find intrinsic beauty valuable. We can also look at broken things, and in an act of beauty, repair and restore the things that were broken making them beautiful again. That’s not just art, but works in other things like relationships as well.

A critical value of our church is beauty, the longing to create beauty and to be, each individually and within community, restorers of beauty.

The things that qualify are as immeasurable as their are gifts in people. What’s your gift of creation or restoration?